Trademarks + Brands by Corsearch

US-based domain name and internet security company Verisign released its Q1 2018 report, "The Domain Name Industry Brief," which highlights trends in domain name registrations and includes key performance indicators.

Overall,domain name registrations are growing by approximately 3.2 million, or 1%, year over year. Check out these other interesting stats from the Q1 report:

Renaming a brand, a product, or a company is a huge, complex project. Have you ever thought about what happens when a country undergoes a name change?

The African nation of Swaziland is doing just that. It was announced in April that Swaziland was changing its name to "eSwatini," which means "home of the Swazi people." The new name eSwatini isn't completely "new" — a lot of the residents already use it locally — but the renaming announcement made by the country's King Mswati III on his 50th birthday, during the country's celebrations marking 50 years of independence from Great Britain,reportedly caught many citizens by surprise.

According to an AFP news agency report, the king said: "African countries on getting independence reverted to their ancient names before they were colonized. So from now on the country will be officially be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini." He also cited another reason for the name change: "Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland."

Sales of counterfeit Italian goods are taking a 1%–2% bite out of Italy's GDP, according to a recent OECD report. These counterfeit and pirated goods (including luxury handbags, watches, car parts, and more) are estimated to total over €35 billion in 2013 — nearly 5% of global Italian manufacturing sales. The report, "Trade in Counterfeit Goods and the Italian Economy," found that Italian companies lost more than €25 billion in sales.

Imports of fake products into Italy are also an issue — with more than €10 billion worth of products in 2013 mostly imported from China and Hong Kong. High-tech electronic, electrical and optical products were the sectors most affected, with clothing, footwear, and leather products following.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that internet service providers (ISPs) no longer have to pay the cost of blocking websites that breach trademarks. The court's unanimous ruling, against French luxury goods maker Cartier means that companies that want to enforce blocks against, for example, companies that sell counterfeit goods, must now pay "reasonable costs" to ISPs.

Calling the ruling "a potential landmark win," Mobile News notes that the ruling raises questions in the legal community about whether the same principle could apply to illegal downloads of copyrighted music.

When you're clearing trademarks, you need a truly complete picture of potential showstoppers or other problems. This is particularly true in the case of the USPTO, where trademark requirements must adhere to exacting standards in order to ensure a smooth application process.